


Not My First Rodeo

by sincerelymendacious



Category: Psychonauts
Genre: Artists, Espionage, Gen, Lassos, Stealing, Wrangling, memory manipulation, office buildings, shady government agencies doing shady things, sneaky ninja-cowboy hybrid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-02-22 20:34:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23933359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sincerelymendacious/pseuds/sincerelymendacious
Summary: Sneaking around someone's psyche might sound like something out of a spy movie for most people. For J.T. Hoofburger, it's just another day on the job.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 9





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I came up with this idea for J.T.'s future role within the Psychonauts months ago. I started writing a fic for it, dropped it for a few months, then picked it back up again. I always like to imagine what sort of role the campers will play within the Psychonauts organization, if any, and I thought that this particular job would make for an interesting job for everyone's favorite cow-poke.

J.T. craned his neck upward, grimacing as he took in the tall structure casting its shadow down over him.  _ Of course _ , he thought, sighing and trying to smother the tide of irritation that was rising up within him.  _ Mountain’s just what I need.  _

Maybe calling the structure a mountain was inaccurate, although it did mimic the basic shape of one that you’d find out in the real world, with its wide base and tapered peak. . Rather than being formed out of rock, the mountain was made up of blocky rectangular segments that jutted outward and gave it the look of one those jenga towers. The blocks all varied in color, staring with light pastels on the bottom tiers and gradually becoming darker and more masculine as they spiraled up. The upper-most tier consisted of deep, woody shades like chestnut and mahogany that reminded J.T. of his desk back at headquarters. The peak was obscured by large, grey clouds that J.T.’s vision could not penetrate through from his current position.

Well, regardless of what it was called, J.T. knew that he would have to scale it, possibly all the way to the top. He was feeling that odd pull in his gut as he looked upon the mountain-tower's cloudy peak, as though what he was looking for was beckoning him to it. J.T. had been told by his predecessor that once you were on the job long enough you eventually developed an intuition about what direction you needed to go even before you even saw your first figment. “Becomes second nature to you,” Boris Carron had said to him during their one and only meeting. He had tapped the side of his head, smiling at the nervous J.T. reassuringly. “I could probably pop into your mind and find all of your vaults faster than a...what do you cowboys say? Than a Jackrabbit crossing the prairie.”

He reached up for his hat and then, after remembering that he wasn’t wearing it, settled for slapping his thigh with his hand, the action nowhere near as satisfying without his Stetson.  _ Time’s a wastin’  _ he grumbled to himself as he began trudging toward the base. He approached the mountain carefully, his footsteps making no noise upon the grassy earth as he walked toward it. There was a knack to moving silently like this; of making sure that your weight was balanced between your feet, of putting your heel down on the ground first before the rest of your foot, of avoiding sticks, leaves and other obstacles without devoting too much of your attention to it. It was a skill that J.T. had been quick to pick up, much to the surprise of both himself and his instructor. “The only thing keeping you from being completely undetectable are those boots you’re wearing,” she had said, pointing down at his rough-leather Noconas. “You can’t be stomping around in those when you’re out in the field.”

The all-black, slipper-like shoe Headquarters had equipped him with were deemed more suitable for the work they had him doing. They were alright, J.T. supposed, they got him where he needed to go without any of the mental agents noticing his presence within their host’s mind. Fit was a bit tight, but that didn’t seem like anything worth complaining about to J.T.

He came to a stop right at the base, not far from where a path leading up into the mountain opened up. The only thing guarding it was a lime-green rectangular figment that looked like a certificate of some kind, floating right at the entrance. Through the transparent figment J.T. could see that the path was smooth and gently sloped, a walk that would start off as an easy one.  _ Probably not for long,  _ J.T. predicted. He knew from previous experience that mental landscapes always got more difficult to traverse the further you moved into them. 

He looked away from the path and craned his neck upward again, his close proximity allowing him to get a better look at the blocks that made up the mountain’s face. They were flat and smooth, with nothing for him to get a foothold on, which made physically climbing the mountain impossible. The tops also appeared to be completely flat, and he could see Censors standing on a few of them, keeping a vigilant eye out on the field he had just come from.

They hadn’t spotted him, so he turned back and looked out at the field stretching out towards the horizon. There was nothing of interest- no objects, no buildings, no mental figures, not even any figments- indicating that all of the important aspects of Terrence Tringle’s psyche were contained within the mountain. Up above, the sky was clear and cloudless, a teal blanket over the world.  That did not mean that searching the mountain would be a quick, simple task, Mental worlds rarely, if ever, followed the rules of the physical world, and for all J.T. knew, following that path could lead him into a vast labyrinth of fears, insecurities, ambitions and nightmares. 

It was for this reason that he bypassed the path entirely, instead choosing to circle around to the pale pink block right next to the path’s entrance. J.T. placed his palm flat on it, noting how it felt similar to the fabricy junk that the walls of his cubicle were made of. He estimated its height to be about ten to twelve feet high; certainly not beyond the capability of his levitation skills. Taking a step back, he squinted up at the higher tiers. Aside from their coloration, they looked similar to the ones at the bottom, but there would be no way for him to know for certain until he was up there. He took a deep breath, pooling all of his good feelings together and concentrating them underneath his feet, and then began to rise, exhaling as he lifted himself swiftly into the air. 

He landed softly and soundlessly onto the flat top of the cube, immediately glancing over to the upper right, in the direction of the nearest censor. It was still looking out at the endless field, completely unaware of the presence of the foreign entity a mere two blocks over. The impulse to shoot the bespectacled creature right off the mountainside pulsed in his mind, aggression instinctively flaring up within him. J.T. bit the inside of his mouth hard until it ebbed away. Though his shot was clear, and there was no one else around, he knew that the short burst of offensive energy could potentially catch the attention of the other Censors that were no doubt lurking around. J.T. wanted to be in and out of this man’s mind as quickly as he could, and taking pot-shots at the mental fauna was counterproductive to that.

The blocks appeared to be spiraling upward in a counter-clockwise manner, so J.T. had no choice but to sneak by the censor. Hardly a difficult task, given his extensive training in stealth techniques that had gotten him out of much tighter situations than this. He floated himself up to the cube, allowed his feet to touch the ground briefly, and then immediately proceeded to the next level. He was on the cube for maybe two seconds at most, and in that short period of time the censor noticed nothing afoot. 

There were no censors on this block, so J.T. allowed himself a moment to recover and make a quick observation of his surroundings. No censors on the block above this one- it seemed like Tringle’s psyche wasn’t expending a whole lot of mental energy on guarding the outer layer of the mountain. J.T. continued onward and upward, stopping to rest and making a cursory examination of the next block, and repeating this pattern for the following levels, with the only variation of this process being the use of invisibility when it seemed like there was a chance that a censor might catch sight of him. 

He was making quick progress, though the climb probably would have been faster had he gone two blocks at a time. “Fast” did not always mean efficient, however, and he knew from experience that rushing carelessly through a mind often led to one wasting more time on a mission to fix one’s mistakes, if not directly to disaster. So J.T. took his time, ascending the mountain and keeping an eye out for movement, be it that of a potential hostile or of a vault randomly prancing about. The latter was unlikely, but not outside of the realm of possibility. Vaults had a tendency to run about as they pleased, and there certainly was a chance, albeit small, that his quarry was hanging around the exterior of the mountain instead of the interior.  _ Sure would be nice if I found it waiting for me right next block,  _ he thought to himself. The job would be much easier if he didn’t actually have to go all the way to the mountain’s peak. 

Unfortunately, that was not to be, for he did not run into any Vaults during his climb. To make matters worse, his progress up the mountain was stalled by a swirling mass of deep gray fog on what he had counted as the fifteenth tier. The fog was thicker than a bowl of his mother’s three bean chilli, and he could see nothing when he squinted into it; no blocks, no structures, no censors, and certainly no memory vaults. Tentatively, he stretched his arm out into the mist and his hand instantly vanished from view, like someone had made a clean cut through his wrist. He snatched it back, deeming the fog unnavigable. There was probably nothing within it-fog like this often signified an aspiration yet unmet, and it would remain this way until Tringle met whatever personal goal he had set for himself. That explained why J.T. hadn’t been able to make anything out on the mountain’s peak when he’d been down at the base- there wasn’t actually anything there.  _ Might never be anything there, _ J.T. mused, rubbing his chin contemplatively,  _ if the fellow’s got too much ambition in him. Folk like that ain't ever satisfied.  _

He chastised himself for being so quick to judge the man whose mind he’d broken into and reset his train of thought to what he was going to do now. He had to go into the mountain, that fact was not up for debate. But should he float himself down to where the path began at the base, or back the way he came, block by block? On the surface, going straight down seemed faster, but then he’d have to scale the inside of the mountain from the bottom up, which, since he had a hunch that the vault he wanted was near the top, would render any time saved with this method lost. If he went down the way had come up, however, there was a chance that he might happen upon a crevice into the mountain that he could slip through, one that hopefully would be close to where he felt he needed to go. This option was risky, especially if there were no cracks in Tringle’s psyche, but it was one worth taking.  _ Should have been on the lookout for ‘em in the first place,  _ J.T. thought as he reversed his direction, annoyed with himself for not being more observant.  _ Rookie mistake.  _

He lucked out- sort of- on the tenth level, five tiers away from the top. There was a small, easily missed gap, tucked into the corner where the edge of the cube met the face of the mountain. It would be a tight fit, even for a man with J.T. 's slim build, but he thought he could manage it, was trained to do so, actually. He crouched down to peer into the hole, bracing his palms on the sides of it to keep himself from falling in. There appeared to be a chamber of some sort, though the lighting was too dim to make out anything other than the vague outlines of the objects contained within. Directly below the hole seemed to be a raised platform of some kind, small, unidentifiable objects scattered on top of it. He couldn’t see or hear any movement, but that did not mean there were no active mental agents within it. In the real world, Tringle was sound asleep, his deep slumber aided by tranq bomb that J.T. had lobbed discreetly at his head. Mental agents, whether active or passive, tended to be more sedated when the host was asleep, but that did not mean that an inconveniently placed Censor or Personal Demon couldn’t cause him trouble. 

He made himself invisible as a precaution before entering the crevice, putting one leg into the opening at a time before shimmying his way in. After about ten-seconds of quiet twisting and turning, he dropped down noiselessly onto the raised platform. He stood about two feet above the ground, on what he was quick to realize was a desk. A desk that, much to his chagrin, somebody was sitting behind. 

The Denizen- that was what sentient beings who could be communicated with and were not overtly hostile were referred to- was nearly as wide as the desk he sat at, with a florid complexion, snubby nose, and big, jowly cheeks. He squinted up at J.T. with a puzzled expression, as though he knew something was wrong but could not pinpoint exactly what it was. His bushy gray brows came together, looking like a pair of fuzzy, old caterpillars that had been glued to his face. 

J.T. froze and held his breath, unable to tell how close the Denizen was to catching onto this presence. His invisibility prevented him from being seen, but that was not something he could maintain forever, so he needed to remove himself from here as soon as possible. A glance behind him revealed that the chamber- more like an office, really-a door opening out to what looked like a hallway, another, smaller office visible across the way. He’d be able to get out quickly and quietly- but first he had to get off the desk without making a sound. Which could be difficult, as one wrong step could jostle the small objects on the desk, which would alert the Denizen. 

J.T. decided that the best way to go about this was to back out of the room with levitation while maintaining his invisibility. Using two powers at the same time would not be easy, especially when both of those powers drained a lot of mental energy when used on their own. It would require him to concentrate very hard on certain emotions- levitation required him to focus on positive feelings ones that made him feel light enough to walk on air, while invisibility tapped into the user’s desire to to be unseen and unnoticed. 

He envisioned himself back home in Noble, alone in the vast prairie by his parent’s farm, the one he had often sought refuge in as a child. In his mind, it was a cloudless night, with only the thin gold crescent of the moon and a multitude of pin-prick stars providing illumination upon the field. He could almost feel the breeze blowing against his face, the rustling of the grass at his feet (here, he was wearing his boots, not his constricting slipper-shoes) sounding like soothing whispers. A feeling of peace spread throughout him at the memory of that place he’d fled to whenever his fears and frustrations threatened to overwhelm him, where as a child he’d been able to melt into the scenery and hide from his problems. 

Before he knew it, he was floating. Not too high, perhaps an inch or two at most, but that was all he needed to avoid the paper and pens and other office paraphernalia he might have accidentally stepped on or kicked. Keeping a wary eye on the Denizen (who was currently scratching the top of his balding red head), he slowly moved himself backwards, the image of that secluded prairie still fueling his escape. He floated halfway across the room before touching down onto the carpeted floor, for there was no reason to expend his energy going all the way to exit when it wasn’t necessary. He walked out of the room at a quick pace, taking long, silent strides, and was out in the hallway before the Denizen could blink.

He reappeared once he was out of its line of sight, resting his back against the wall as he caught his breath and allowed his mental energy to recover. His heart rate was up, more out of exertion than fear or stress, and his legs felt a little weak. As he rested, he took in the hallway he had escaped into. It had the look of one of those old state department offices that had seen better days- beige, cracked walls, frayed carpeting a shade darker, doors with peeling paint, and a stucco ceiling that had gone off-white with age. The only splash of real color came from the bright purple cobwebs strewn up along where the ceiling met the wall. J.T. frowned, thinking that the whole place warranted a good cobweb dusting.  _ Not your business. This ain’t a house-keeping mission.  _

The other office was about half the size of the one he’d just been in, almost a closet, really. J.T.s lips twitched upward as he looked at it, reminded of the tiny space Chops had been given when he’d worked in the Construct Department. “Place is so cramped I can barely fit my hair in it,” he had grumbled to J.T. “Swear to God, I’m gonna transfer out of here as soon as I can.” 

It was too dark for him to make out anything other than the rectangular form of a desk, so J.T. pushed himself away from the wall and headed into it once he got his wind back, careful not to allow the Denizen to spot him. There were no mental agents in it, and it looked pretty empty overall. The desk was made of cheap plywood, a thin layer of dust covering its surface. The scratched up leather chair had a tear in the seat and did not look like it could bear too much weight. A blue figment of a sad-looking man sat in it, dissatisfaction with his lot in life writ upon his face. The file cabinet was dented, the top drawer ajar. The office looked like it had been abandoned a long time ago, and whatever it had represented was something that Tringle had moved on from. And was likely much happier for it, if it’s shoddy furniture and the appearance of the Denizen across the way was anything to go by.  _ Best get to moving myself,  _ J.T. thought as he exited the room.  _ What I’m looking for ain’t in here.  _

Walking down the hallway- or up it, as it were- proved to be more strenuous than J.T. had anticipated. The floor was sloped, and it only got steeper when J.T. rounded the curve that led up to the next level.  _ Give me flat plains any day,  _ he thought as he stepped as lightly as he could while moving upward. 

The walls here were lined with figments that looked like posters, motivational ones that had inspirational quotes transposed over grand, rocky landscapes and bright, sunlit skies. He stopped in front of a white one that featured an oil rig on fire in the middle of the ocean- BURN THE MIDNIGHT OIL it said in big capital letters. J.T. thought that one seemed mighty peculiar, and did not know if it was an actual poster in the real world or if it was just something Tringle’s psyche had cooked up. 

Much like the level before, there were two rooms on this level, one directly across from the other. When J.T. managed to drag himself up to the offices, he discovered that they were drastically different from the two he had seen on the previous level. The one on the right side featured a pool table instead of a desk, a rack with billiard balls within it lying on top. The walls were made up of dark wood paneling, with those knick-knacks often found in taverns and restaurants afixed to them. A closer look revealed that the fixtures were actually figments of trophies, though he couldn’t make out what they were for from the doorway.  _ He’s the type to turn anything into a contest,  _ J.T. surmised before glancing at the other room. 

This one had two mental agents in it- a Denizen and a large Censor, its sleeveless jacket revealing it’s thick, muscular arms. Neither had seen him; the censor seemed to be watching the Denizen as he snoozed behind what looked to be more like a bar counter than a desk. They had their head tucked into their arms as they snored, obscuring their face from view.  _ That Censor’s like a bouncer,  _ J.T. thought as he quickly put distance between himself and the hostile.  _ I ain't tangling with him if he ain’t guarding a vault. _

J.T. proceeded to the next level, noting how the hallway seemed to get even more steep. Just like the previous hallways, it had two office-like chambers, the theme of them a more domestic one. J.T. did not investigate them longer than the time it took for him to confirm there were no vaults within. 

As he trudged up the space between the two hallways, J.T. felt his muscles tense up, and a faint bubbling in his stomach. His instincts were kicking in, informing him that he best tread lightly, for he was going to encounter danger soon. He flattened his back against the wall and paused, half-expecting something to come barreling down towards him at any moment. Nothing did, but he could hear active mental agents moving about on the next hallway up- soft, high-pitched grunts and little thumps like something was hopping all over the place. Good news and bad news- the thumps were indicative of a Vault prancing around, but those grunts sounded like they were coming from Personal Demons, explosive little varmints that could easily cut his mission short with a single blast. 

J.T. held his breath and strained his ears trying to identify the number of P.D.’s by noise alone. It was hard to tell, since all P.D.s tended to sound the same, but he thought he heard at least two of them up there. His gut told him to expect even more. He blew out the breath in a quiet stream, considering the best way to approach this situation. If those had been Censors, it would have been easy; just snipe the whole group out. You couldn’t do that with P.D.s; psi-blasting one would cause it to explode, and if it was around another P.D. when it did, it would set off a chain reaction that would at the very least make J.T. 's job harder, if it didn’t kick him right out of Tringle’s mind. 

Before he could do anything, he needed to scope the scene out, see who was where and if there was anything he could use to his advantage. He kept himself against the wall as he crept upward, turning himself invisible the moment he emerged into the hall. Once again, his instincts were right- lingering near the office doors were four round-headed orange rascals, their usual bright glow absent due to inactivity. Further down the hall was the vault, running up and down the far half of the hall, the steep incline not impeding its movements. 

There was no way to know if this was the Vault that J.T. was searching for. His gut told him no. The Vault he wanted was relatively new and would not have had any personal trauma associated with it, which this one clearly did. He still had to check, but he would do that after he got rid of the P.D.s. They were looking pretty drowsy right now-seemed like they were making noises just to keep themselves awake-but they’d fire right up if J.T. started heading toward them. 

Since shooting them was not an option, the best thing to do would be to corral them into one space where they could not get in the way of J.T. and the Vault. The office on the right would serve that purpose well enough, since it was probably as empty as all of the other ones had been. He had a location, now he needed a way to lure them all in there. Personal Demons were attracted to mental energy, be that native to the mind they lived in or from a foreign source. It wouldn’t take much to get them all lit up, even something as small as a bundle of mental aggression would do the trick. 

J.T. ducked back into the corridor between the halls and held his hands out in front of him. He bit his lip and mustered up his aggressive reserves, concentrating it into something small and manageable. An angry, red-orange creature soon appeared, already trying to squirm out of his hands and back into his head. J.T. held onto it, shaking off the light-headedness came with a sacrifice of mental energy. He transferred the little ball of aggression to his telekinetic hand and then extended it out towards the group of P.D.s. It took only seconds of dangling it around for them to notice its presence, the fuse on their bulbous heads alighting as the bait caught their attention. He waved the thing from side to side, watching as the P.D.s followed it, their arms outstretched. Then, with one flick of his telekinetic wrist, he tossed the morsel of energy into the right-side office. The P.D.s all scrambled into the room, screeching gleefully as they chased after it. J.T. shut the door when the last one piled into the room, holding it closed until the explosions beyond it subsided. 

The Personal Demons were taken care of for now, although they were not permanently gone; they would likely regenerate within the next ten minutes. That was fine, J.T. would only be here for no longer than two, regardless of whether or not this was the Vault he was after. It was still running about on the other side of the hall, oblivious to the sudden disappearance of its volatile companions. There was probably a Denizen in the room to the left, so J.T. thought it would be best to bring the Vault over to him, rather than go over to it. He closed his left hand and made quick pulling motions with his right, as though he were pulling an invisible rope out. In less than three seconds an actual rope manifested, a glowing orange coil made of pure psychic energy. 

Starting with the ‘tail’ end, he coiled the rope into similarly sized circles and then threaded the smallest circle through them to form a loop. He crept forward a few steps to shorten the distance between himself and the prancing Vault, and then, when it was in the right position, twirled the loop over his head and tossed it. It landed over one of the vault’s ‘horns’ (the little gear-like growths jutting out on either side of its head), exactly where J.T. had wanted it to. He pulled the loop tight before the Vault could shake it off and began dragging it across the hall, putting one hand over the other as he drew the rope in. 

There were a lot of things that J.T. liked about Vaults, but his favorite quality had to be how quiet they were. Had this Vault been able to make an audible noise, it likely would have done so, but as it was the only sound that came from it was that of its body sliding along the carpet. 

Once the Vault was close enough, J.T. knelt down and turned it so that its face was directed towards him. It looked up at him in a manner J.T. determined to be docile, reminding him of the calves he used to practice his lassoing on back home. That was probably just projection on his part though, since the vault did not have the ability to alter its expression. He raised his fist and gave it a firm knock- no need to smack them too hard- and the door opened, revealing the slides within. 

It was titled ‘Almost made it.’ J.T. only needed to see the first slide to know that this Vault was not the one he was looking for. It featured Tringle and a female companion at the start of an outdoor trail, one that probably led up the mountain that took up most of the background. The setting was all wrong; the memory J.T. needed had occurred two nights ago and in the city that Tringle lived in. He sighed and shut the door, disappointed but not surprised. “Go on now,” he said gently as his lasso dissolved. “Go back to your business.” 

The Vault lingered for half a second, then hopped back to where it had been before, acting as though the brief break in its routine had never happened. That was another thing that J.T. liked about Vaults- they never held a grudge against you for cracking them open. 

He passed the Vault by and continued on his way, the hallway now inclined so steeply that levitating to the end was less of a strain on his astral projection. He rounded the corner and discovered a water cooler set against the wall, underneath a poster of a man scaling a skyscraper with mountain-climbing equipment. The liquid inside of the tank was a blue too bright be water, being the exact same shade as the little bouncing bits of mental health that could be found in varying quantities in any person’s mind. Tringle’s mind appeared to be pretty healthy, so J.T. figured that there would be no harm done if he were to help himself to a cup. 

He glanced around- fountains like these often had a censor or two guarding them- and then quickly took one of the paper cups and filled it up about three-quarters full. It tasted kind of funny- kind of citrusy, not at all what you’d expect a blue drink to taste like, but he felt a bit more restored after drinking it.  _ Must be workohol,  _ J.T. thought wryly to himself as he crumpled the cup up and stuck it in his pocket (no need to litter the pristine hallway with his trash, after all). 

It was fortunate that J.T. had taken that respite, for not only had the incline ramped up exponentially on the next level, there were also a number of censors patrolling it. This, J.T. was quick to discover was due to the machine set against the wall on the other side of the hallway, next to a figment of one of those fake decorative plants. The sign above it read ‘Copy/Fax’ but J.T. knew it to be the spawn point from which all of Tringle’s replenishable mental agents- such as Censors and P.D.s- emerged. There were only three; two moving in tandem with each other and one going the opposite way, with the three meeting in the middle by the doors. Not a lot, but one could sound the alarm for the rest of them to come piling down on him if it caught sight of him. 

Sneaking by them with invisibility wasn’t an option; he wouldn’t be able to maintain it long enough to due to the extra exertion the incline would put on his astral projection. Floating over them would get him down the hall, but what if the Vault was in one of the offices? He’d have to touch back down onto the floor and then wrangle the Vault while in one of the rooms, where any Censor could spot him just by poking their head in. 

He could take all three out no problem- just snipe ‘em all out with three quick successive shots. J.T. certainly wanted to; Censors made great targets and there’d be a lot of satisfaction in shooting three at once. The copier’s close proximity worried him though. Censors restored themselves faster than P.D.s, and if Tringle’s mental defenses sensed a threat, it might produce more than just the three needed to replace the downed ones. 

After a few moments of thought, he formed a plan that would distract the Censors without destroying them. He levitated up to the ceiling and then floated halfway up the hall, stopping between the two doors. He waited there, holding himself as flat against the ceiling as he could, until all three of the Censors came together below him. Once they were all lined up, he dropped a confusion grenade down onto their heads, taking care not to breathe in until the yellow gas had dissipated. 

The effect was immediate. The Censors staggered about for a few seconds before the one in the middle reached back the arm that held his stamp and smacked it down onto the forehead of the one nearest to him, exclaiming ‘yep!’ in a nasally voice. This prompted the other one to throw itself against its instigator’s back, and from there a brawl worthy of any backwater saloon ensued.J.T. allowed himself an internal snicker as he lowered himself down. Tossing confusion grenades to make Censors fight was something every psychic kid did at least once, and it was sort of juvenile, but it came in handy in situations like this. 

He did not go all the way down to the ground; just low enough to take a look into each office. Nothing moving around in the office on the right. The office in the left did have a Denizen in it, though J.T. could not make out any of its features. It slept on in spite of the heap of censors tussling not ten feet away from its desk. Having little reason to linger, J.T. moved on to his next destination before the Censors could come back to their senses and turn their stamps on him. Things proceeded in much the same manner on the next hallway- the three Censors were there, patrolling as they had been, and were easily taken out by a confusion grenade thrown at the right moment. He was not in that hallway for longer than two minutes; the time it took for him to confirm that his quarry was not frolicking about.

Only one level left before the impenetrable fog cut the rest of this corporate mountain off. J.T. was certain that this was where he would find the Vault, for where else could it be? Seemed like Tringle did most of his mental work on the upper levels of his mind- everything below the thirteenth level had been left to collect dust and mental cobwebs. J.T. set himself down to rest for a moment and had to brace his body against the wall to prevent himself from sliding back down to where he came from. _ Damn,  _ he thought as he regained his balance.  _ One wrong move and your gonna be tumblin’ back down to where you started. How can anyone stand livin’ like this?  _

Once he found a semi-stable position, he peered out into the final hallway. It was different from the others- the floor had much softer, pale grey carpet and spotless white walls; a combination far more visually pleasing than the plain beige on beige he’d been sneaking through before. The motivational posters were present here as well, but they were framed instead of just plastered directly onto the wall, giving the hall a more professional look. No cobwebs decorated this spot- everything here was clean and well-maintained. The doors- painted a glossy black, with a shiny glass window set into the top half- were both open. Light spilled out of the room on the left, indicating that someone was still up at this late hour.

J.T. drew in a breath as he levitated up the corridor for what he hoped would be the last time. As he got closer to the office, he heard soft thumps and a voice grumbling words too lowly for J.T. to make out. His vault was in there, but so was the Denizen, and they clearly weren’t too happy about something. 

You couldn’t deal with a Denizen in the way that you dealt with other mental agents. They were sentient, often having their own concerns and goals, which sometimes did not align with the best interests of the host. Taking them out like you would a Censor or P.D. was more trouble than it was worth, and likely to severely upset the balance of the mental ecosystem. It was also unnecessary, as most Denizens were not hostile, even to foreign mental entities such as himself. It was possible that J.T. could work with whoever was in that office, though he’d have to mind his manners. Angering a Denizen could cause more problems than a stampede of P.D.’s charging you with their fuses lit. 

J.T. landed near the office, grabbing the doorframe for purchase on the steeply-sloped floor. Excitement sparked within him when he discovered his Vault running in circles around a large, U-shaped black desk in the middle of the room. There were foot-prints in the carpet around the desk, implying that the Vault had been at it for an extended period of time. Sitting at the desk in a cushioned leather chair was the Denizen, a woman with her head bowed into her hands, her fingers tearing through her dark-brown hair. Her suit jacket was hanging on the back of her chair, and the sleeves of her shiny, pale blue button up shirt were rolled up to the elbows. Her desk was a bit of a mess- there were some stained napkins crumpled up next to an overturned mug, and the flat-screen computer monitor had been unplugged and placed on the left side of her desk, presumably to prevent the coffee from spilling onto it. Pens and papers were scattered about on the floor.  _ This vault crashed into her desk more than once,  _ J.T. deduced as the Denizen let out a frustrated groan.  _ Bet she can't do any work with this fellow tearing up around her; which’ll definitely put her in a foul mood.  _

The nameplate on the office door stated the Denizen’s name to be ‘Arlene Cougard.’ J.T. knocked on the doorframe, catching her attention. “Hello, ma’am,’ he said, a polite, subservient smile on his face. “Is this a good time?” He spoke without accent, his southwestern twang replaced with what Chops referred to as his ‘generic everyman voice’.’ 

Ms. Cougard looked up at him, narrowing her sharp grey eyes, a vein visible near her hairline. Her expression wasn’t friendly in the least, but her face was attractive enough, with her high cheekbones, full mouth, and the lines near her eyes that gave her an air of maturity. “Does it look like it’s a good time?” she snapped, pinning an icy glare onto J.T. “What sort of question is that?”

J.T. did not much appreciate being yelled at in any circumstance, but he managed to force out a laugh that sounded convincingly casual. “A stupid one, I suppose,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.

His self-deprecation did not warm Cougard to him one bit. “What do you want?” she demanded, tucking the loose strands of her hair back into her bun. “You can’t be here for a meeting. I-” The Vault cut her off by bumping into her desk, rattling the already disordered items further. “I had my secretary cancel everything I had planned for today.” She directed the cold fury of her gaze to the vault as it came around the curve. 

J.T. gave her his most ingratiating smile. “That’s actually why I’m here,” he said, stepping fully into her office. It was thankfully not sloped at all, like the hallway outside. “I was hired to take care of that.” 

Cougard’s expression relaxed momentarily before suspicion tightened it once again. “Hired?” she asked. “By who? I don’t remember arranging for a private contractor to come in to take care of this.” 

Private contractor? Okay, J.T. could go along with that. “Some guy named Tringle called me out here,” he explained. Mentioning the host’s name like this was risky, but making up a name that Cougard might not recognize was more so. “Said you were having some issues with a pest.”

“That is an understatement,” Cougard said, leaning back in her chair, tone less sharp than before but still far from cordial. “This thing- I don’t know what it is; it looks like something that got loose from the accounting office.” She pointed at it, her finger following the vault as it rounded the front of her desk. “It’s disrupted my entire workflow. I haven’t been able to do anything with it stomping all over the place.” She sighed, shaking her head. “And you’re here to get rid of it, right?” 

If J.T. had been wearing his hat, he would have tipped it at her. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Hm.” Cougard nodded, looking J.T. up and down, the hint of a smile curving her lips. J.T. held himself still, not allowing his discomfort with the way she evaluated him to show. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all day. I’d offer you a seat but my chairs were destroyed by that thing. We’ll have to discuss the details of your contract with us like this.” 

“There’s really nothing to discuss,” J.T. said, thinking he preferred Cougard’s rudeness to the way she was appraising him as he stood in her doorway. “Tringle and I have already sorted everything out. No need to waste any more time.” 

“Tringle taking the initiative once again,” Cougard said appreciatively, speaking more to herself than to J.T. “I do like a man who knows how to take charge.” She began playing with the top button of her blouse, a dreamy look coming into her eyes as she mused upon her employee’s many virtues. 

J.T. cleared his throat. “Um. Ma’am, I can get started on getting this guy out of your hair, if you don’t mind.” 

“Hm?” Cougard snapped out of her reverie and waved her hand absently. “Yes, do that. Get this thing out of my office.” 

_ Don’t think it would hurt her much to say please _ , J.T. thought as he manifested his lasso. “Please remain seated, ma’am,” he said as he stepped into the vault’s path. “This won’t take long.”

Getting the lasso around the vault was as simple as tossing the loop onto the floor and then pulling it tight when the vault stepped into it. The problem came when he tried to reel it in, this vault having more fight in it than the one downstairs. It dug it’s three feet into the carpet, resisting the lasso’s pull. J.T. gripped the rope with both hands, maintaining a steady hold on the vault as it fought against its restraints, allowing it to tire itself out rather than wasting his strength trying to yank it towards him. 

Cougard observed all of this with a raised eyebrow, arms crossed over her chest. “I’m so glad that I got that carpeting put in,” she remarked. “This would have scratched up the hardwood flooring.” 

J.T. replied to that with a grunt of acknowledgement. After a few seconds of tug-of-war, the Vault gave up and collapsed on the floor. J.T. dragged it over to him, glad that Vaults were made of sturdy material; otherwise it would have suffered some awful rug-burn. “There we go,” he muttered as it slid across the carpet to him. “See, it’s not so bad.” He bent forward and gave it a scratch behind the horns. 

Cougard stood up behind her desk, looking at the two of them with puzzled admiration. “That was fast,” she said, audibly pleased with J.T.’s efficiency. “You’re pretty handy with that rope.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” J.T. kept his eyes on the vault as he stood up, ignoring the low tone of seduction that sweetened the Denizen’s voice. “I’m just going to take this out of here.” He began moving toward the door with the Vault in tow, not wanting to spend any more time here than he had to. 

“Fine with me,” Cougard said, sitting back down. J.T. could feel her eyes on his back as he departed. “Come back once you’ve taken care of that thing. You deserve a bonus.” 

“Uh, okay.” J.T. had zero intention of setting foot inside this office again. He shut the door behind him and then led the vault into the office across the way. It was almost as nice as the one Cougard occupied, if a bit smaller. The desk was topped with a sleek dark glass, and the computer on tip of it was newer than the ones back at H.Q. The many figments placed on the wall looked like those medical degrees you’d see in a doctor’s office. The nameplate on the door read ‘Terrence Tringle- Assistant Regional Manager.’ J.T. had no idea what that job entailed. 

He wasted little time in getting the Vault to open up. The memory was titled ‘Too Much to Drink?’ leaving J.T. with little doubt that this was the vault containing the memory slide he needed. Before he went any further, he knelt down to the Vault’s level, his knee on the creature’s massive tongue, and set his telekinetic hand on the vault’s door. This pretty much immobilized the Vault, which was necessary if the next part of J.T.’s mission was to go smoothly. 

The first slide showed a group of suits sitting at the bar of a swanky restaurant. The center suit- a slim man with short, neatly styled hair and confident expression- was Tringle, and here he was the recipient of numerous back-pats and envious glares from his companions. Several empty martini glasses stood on the counter before him. The following slide featured Tringle ogling a suited woman who closely resembled Arlene Cougard. J.T. skipped past it to slide number three, where a significantly drunker and more disheveled Tringle was being loaded into a taxi cab. Excitement coursed through his veins; the rush of energy that typically accompanied him finding what he was looking for. 

The next slide- J.T. guessed it to be either the last or second to last- showed Tringle’s face in profile as he stared out of the taxi’s window. Outside, a fancy-looking Condo building stood, with a man floating in mid-air on the building’s right side by the fifth story. At first glance it looked like the man was falling, but a closer examination revealed that wasn’t the case. He had too much control over his posture, exhibiting none of the flailing that would accompany a fall from a great height. The man’s facial features were obscured by distance but an unfortunately placed spotlight revealed that he wore the dark green sweater associated with the Psychonauts. The satchel around his shoulder bulged as though something had been hastily stuffed into it. 

There it was. J.T. leaned forward and reached his arms into the vault’s gaping mouth. He tapped the edges of the frame and felt that it was loose- good. That meant Tringle’s memory of the night was shaky, and thus easier to manipulate. He wedged his fingers between the frame and the vault’s internal walls, and with an ease that spoke of experience, extracted the slide from the vault. 

The Vault did not much like this. It tried to get up, but J.T.’s weight on its tongue kept it pinned to the floor. It’s door tried to slam itself shut, but J.T.’s telekinesis made for an effective door stopper. “It’s okay,” J.T. whispered, the reassurance doing little to soothe the vault as it struggled to back away from him. “You won’t be missing this for too long. I’ll be back with it faster than a coyote after a flock of sheep.” It responded to this by thrashing about wildly, doing it's best knock J.T. arms out of it. 

The Vault didn’t stop shaking until the slide was completely out of it. Then it seemed to lose all life, collapsing onto its belly, it’s door swinging shut with a soft, dejected click once J.T. released it from his telekinetic hold and dissolved the lasso around its foot. If Vaults could make noise, it would probably be whimpering like a dog left out in the rain. J.T. felt sorry for it- he reckoned that he would be in a similarly sorry state if some stranger had tied him up and removed some of his vital organs. 

  
He didn’t indulge in his pity for the poor critter for too long. Time was a wastin’ and his job was only half-done. He swore to the Vault that he wouldn’t be long and contacted the slide artist who’d been assigned to work with him on this mission.  _ Photo’s out of the frame, Ojo. It’s ready to be re-shot.  _


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hard part's over. Supposedly.

The whole thing began two days ago. 

At around 10:00 pm Friday night, Agent Doug Gruggenheim paid a fellow named LeRoi Jones a visit at his upscale, fourteenth floor condominium, located in Seattle’s Madison Park. One the surface, Jones was not a man who should have caught the attention of a government agency devoted to investigating psychic crimes and monitoring supernatural activity. He ran a company that manufactured doors-plain, wooden, open-and-shut doors made to be set into any available door frame. The issue was this: Jones was looking to start making his big doors out of the rare Washington Miniature Glosswood tree- the same wood that the Psychonauts used to make their little doors that led into the mind. 

Gruggenheim had gone in with the intention of ‘gently persuading’ Jones to reconsider his bid for the land the trees were planted on. He’d gone out with Jones’ brain stuffed into his duffel bag, the rest the man left behind to drool on his couch while _Late Night with Conan O’ Brien_ played on the television before him. Nobody had cared to tell J.T. what had caused the negotiation to go so far south that it passed the equator; nor had they cared to divulge how Jones’ brain had gone from being inside his skull to the front pocket of Gruggenheim’s Levenger-brand duffel bag. All he’d been told was that a civilian had spotted Gruggenheim fleeing the building in his panic, and that the witness needed to have his memory tweaked a bit before he decided to tell the police about what he’d seen. 

There was no way to know if Tringle was planning doing that- he had been pretty drunk when it had happened, which would have made even the most open-minded of authority figures skeptical of his already outlandish story- but it was always best to play on the safe side. Jones’ body had already been collected by the Psychonauts, and the careful process of re-braining and recovery would take a few days. The disappearance of a man with Jones’ standing would not go unnoticed, and it was only a matter of time before it ended up in the news. Tringle might decide to come forward with what he knew, or he might not, but the Psychonauts did not want to be implicated in any sort of wrongdoing before they could re-educate Jones on what had happened to him on that night.

Messing around a stranger’s mind in order to sweep a co-worker’s mistake under the rug may have once bothered J.T. Not anymore. It was part of the job he’d been doing for nearly three years now, and if it hadn’t been this, it would have been something else. He didn’t really feel one way or the other about the affair itself; after he was done with Tringle it wouldn’t be any of his business. His most pressing dilemma was whether or not he should sit down as he waited for Agent Ojo to alter the slide he had brought her. He was feeling a little worn out after traversing the mountain that made up Tringle’s mind and a bit of rest would do his astral projection good. On the other hand, Adeleke Ojo was the speediest Slide Artist the Psychonauts employed, having been at it since before J.T. had gotten his first set of spurs at age eight. If he sat, it would not be long before he had to haul himself back up- might be better to just rest his back against the wall. 

“The debate is starting up again,” she said conversationally as she bent over the slanted draft desk. The slide before her took up most of the worksurface, and was illuminated from below. The desk was set up in the middle of the cramped little studio she did all of her work-projects in; a space where there wasn’t much room to stretch out your legs. Her back was to him, so he could not see her face, just the back of her neck and the coil of braids that made up the neat bun on the top of her head. 

“Which debate is that?” J.T. asked as he flipped the tab of his Dr. Pepper open. It was hard for him to keep track of all of the on-going conflicts around the Motherlobe.

“The ‘P-word’ debate,” Adeleke clarified as J.T. crossed over to the only other chair in the room, set in front of a small table piled high with blank memory slides on the draft table’s left side. 

J.T. groaned, his frustration not entirely feigned. “Why’re they startin’ all that up again?” 

Adeleke shrugged her shoulders. From where he now sat he had a view of her brushing what looked like plain old white-out over Gruggenheim’s upper body, erasing Tringle’s recollection of the agent’s face and sweater. The bottom half of the agent’s body would remain intact- Vault’s could be picky about taking back slides that had been messed with, and the less you had to alter the better. “I think one of the new TPT issues referred to somebody as the ‘Paranormal Princess of…’ She paused, raising her eyes to the ceiling as she tried to recall the exact details. “I’m not quite sure. Harris was miffed about it though.”

J.T. leaned back in his chair, taking a sip of his drink- almost tasted like the real thing. Craig Harris was one of three slide-artists currently employed in the Information Control Unit, alongside Agent Ojo and Agent Kang. He was a nice enough guy, but he sure did get his bristles raised over things J.T. considered to be non-issues. “He go off?” 

Adeleke nodded. “He most certainly did,” she answered, angling the brush to the side so that she could white-out Gruggenheim’s arm without taking out too much of the background behind her. “I tuned most of it out to be honest. Lord knows I heard enough about it the last three times this issue cropped up.” She dipped her brush back into the pot. “Can’t say that I understand what the problem is. ‘Paranormal’ seems like a pretty nice term compared to the other things we get flung at us.” 

J.T. scratched his head. “From what I hear, it’s because the word makes us psychics seem like somethin’ other than normal, and that makes everyone else treat us bad.” He shrugged, not sure if he was repeating what Harris and other agents against the word had said to him right. “But the thing is...we are different from other folks. You gotta have some kind of term to describe that.” 

Adeleke made a noise of agreement. “In my humble opinion, getting upset over a word as inoffensive as paranormal means that you don’t have enough problems.” She dabbed out the last traces of Gruggenheim’s hair before slipping the white-out brush back into its container. “You tell them that though, and they threaten to go to H.R.” 

“You don’t actually think they’ll do that, though, right?” J.T. knew that Harris and his ilk could be a bit sensitive at times, but that seemed like a step too far. 

“Oh, who knows.” Adeleke came out of her hunched position, rolling her shoulders and stretching her neck. “If they did, I probably won’t find out until a month later. Long after I’ve forgotten what I’ve done or who I’ve upset.” 

J.T. raised his Dr. Pepper in mock toast. “God bless the bureaucracy,” he said before taking another sip. It had the same effect on him as the ‘water’ from the fountain in Tringle’s mind. “So,” he said, his gaze falling upon the white spot drying on the slide, “who are you plannin’ on putting in Doug’s place?” 

Adeleke looked at the slide and then back at J.T. “Our old friend John Doe,” she replied, a smile playing on her lips.

J.T. grinned back, more than a little relieved. ‘John Doe’ was a fellow who didn’t actually exist. Sometimes the higher-ups asked the slide artists to put the image of a real person into a memory, usually a career criminal whose guilt would not be questioned. The practice never sat right with J.T. Sure, the people being drawn in weren’t exactly angels, but putting anyone away for something they didn’t do wasn’t real justice in J.T.’s eyes. “Shoot, that fella travels far, don’t he? Wasn’t he embezzling money from a waste disposal plant in Panama three days ago?”   
  


“He’s mastered the art of being in two places at once,” Adeleke joked as she checked the spot again to see if it was dry. It must have been, since she turned to face the slide once more. “What I haven’t decided,” she said as she picked up a fine-tipped pen, “is what color shirt he chose to wear to commit this particular crime.”

J.T. chuckled softly. “Well, you got rhino grey, charcoal grey, steel grey, pewter grey, ash grey, stone grey, and all them greys in between.”

“A monochrome rainbow.” Adeleke said, sighing. This was the only part of the job that J.T. had ever heard her complain about. Blacks and whites bored her. The smock she wore to protect her shirt- a vibrant green and yellow button up criss-crossed with a bronze chain pattern- was dotted with a rich variety of colorful stains. She must have been working on her personal projects before he had showed up with his slide. He’d seen some of them before; lively and scenic images of crowded cities that she drafted out in her head before painting out on a canvas in the real-world.

When he’d first met her and the other slide-artists, he’d been envious of them. They were able to retain a bit of themselves while on the job, while J.T. had pretty much forced to mask everything about himself. “People are going to remember a cowboy hopping around their heads,” Boris Carron had told him after he had forced J.T. to remove his hat. He’d gotten over it by now. “Do you reckon that folks will ever be able to remember things in color?” J.T. asked, not really expecting a serious response. 

“It would certainly make my job more interesting,” Adeleke answered as she started sketching John Doe’s body.

The conversation died a peaceful death as Adeleke focused on replacing Agent Gruggenheim with John Doe. J.T. didn’t mind it; it gave him time to relax for a spell before he had to go back into Tringle’s mind. J.T.’s missions could be divided into five stages. The first two stages-infiltration of the target's mind and the extraction of the appropriate slide- had already been completed. J.T. was now on stage three, the alteration of the memory into something more beneficial to the Psychonauts (and supposedly the world at large). This was the easiest stage for him, since it didn’t require him to do more than wait for the Slide Artist on call to hand it back to him. 

The remaining stages involved J.T. replacing the altered slide back into its Vault’s reel, and then recalling his astral projection back into his physical body before getting the hell of the dodge. The most difficult parts of the mission had already passed, but that did not mean that J.T. could relax his guard entirely. Things could still go belly-up. J.T.’s biggest concern was that the Denizen he’d interacted with before wrangling the Vault might realize that there was something fishy about a foreign entity coming into her office without her knowledge.  _ She’s got a lot of work to catch up on that should keep her occupied,  _ J.T. thought as he stared into his soda can contemplatively.  _ That should be enough to keep her behind her desk.  _ And if it wasn’t? Well, J.T. would figure something out.

That figuring kept him occupied as Adeleke drew. Although they did not speak, the studio was not completely silent; there were the soft sounds of pens and brushes going over the slide, the clatter of small objects being dropped and picked up, and the creaks of the chairs as the two occupants of the room shifted in their seats. He only became aware of the noises when they suddenly stopped. J.T. looked up and saw Adeleke with her eyes closed, her mouth a flat line and her brows drawn inward. “Problem?” he asked when she opened her eyes.

A short hesitation came before the answer, letting J.T. know that the message Adeleke had received didn’t have anything to do with the mission at hand. “My brother has just been hired as a Slide Artist,” she said, sounding equal parts confused and concerned. 

J.T. blinked, surprised. The Information Control Unit only ever employed three artists at a time for as long as he’d been working as an Extractor. “Is somebody quitting?” he asked, unable to think of any other reason a new person would have been hired. 

Adeleke shook her head. “Not that I’m aware of. He said that he was only doing it part-time.” 

That was certainly strange. The caseload in Information Control hadn’t been any busier than usual. Why add another person onto the team now? “Maybe they’re opening up another I.C. branch in one of the other outposts?” he posited, though it sounded unlikely even as he said it.

Adeleke blew out a sigh. “He gave me the news while sitting on a jet coming directly from London to the Motherlobe. Pretty sure he’ll be working in this department.” She rubbed her eye with the heel of her palm. “I thought that family members weren’t allowed to work in the same departments.” 

J.T. bit back his congratulations, since it didn’t seem like Adeleke would share the sentiment. “When does he start?” 

“I’m not sure. Some time this week, maybe.”

“Oh.” J.T. bit the inside of his lip, wondering if he’d be overstepping his boundaries by inquiring further. He and Ojo had got along well enough, but they weren’t really friends, and the course of their conversations had never gone past pleasant small talk. One the other hand, J.T. was probably going to be working with her brother real soon- surely she wouldn’t his curiosity too offensive circumstances. “Is that, uh, alright with you?” he asked tentatively, broaching the subject as delicately as he could. “Pardon me if I’m gettin’ too personal, but you don’t sound too enthused about this.”

Adeleke shrugged, turning back towards the slide. “Aside from it being very odd that they hired a part-time artist,” she said as she resumed the last of her inking, “this isn’t the sort of job that would suit him.” 

J.T. mulled that information over for a second. “Because he’s not an artist, or because he’s not a sit-down sort of fellow?” 

“The latter,” Adeleke responded. “He’s young, around your age. Sitting around in an office is going to bore him very quickly.” She put the pen she was using aside and took up another one. “A more active job in the Architectural Unit would be better. Or even doing Extraction, if he has to work in Informational Control.” 

J.T. nearly pointed out that they didn’t have any openings there, before remembering that Ojo’s people hadn’t been hurting for help either. “Might be it’s just a temporary placement,” he said instead. “Higher ups could just be holding him here until a more suitable spot opens up for him.” 

“Hm, perhaps,” Adeleke said, sounding doubtful.

“They had me working with the Mind Clearing teams before they stuck me with this memory-wrangling schtick,” J.T. continued. “I was shootin’ down Censors before they transferred me over here. Said this place was a better use of my skills.” 

“And was it?” Adeleke asked.

J.T. shrugged. “I’m still here.”

* * *

When J.T. arrived back at Tringle’s high-level office, he found the Vault right where he had left it, in much the same position. It was still laying on its stomach, with its stubby legs spread out and it’s door wide open, though it’s tongue had mostly retracted back inside. The final slide of its current reel was visible; it featured Tringle waking up on his couch with a confused expression that only the truly hungover could affect. “Hey there, little buddy,” J.T. whispered, standing before the Vault with the missing slide tucked under his arm.

The Vault looked up at him, something akin to bovine interest sparking into the circular knobs that served as its eyes. It was impossible to measure how long J.T. had been away into minutes, since time did not pass in the psyche the way it did in the physical world. At most, it may have been five minutes. J.T. reckoned that it must have felt like five hours to this poor thing, laying in a dejected heap missing one of it’s parts. “Look at what I’ve got,” he said as he presented the slide, allowing it to get a good look at the image on it. “I told you I’d be back real quick.” The Vault stood up upon seeing its slide. J.T. thought that if it had possessed a tail it would be wagging it pretty fast right about now.

It didn’t seem like the Vault noticed anything amiss but he wouldn’t know for sure until he tried to put it back into the reel. 

Vaults could be funny creatures. Sometimes they kicked up a real row upon seeing him a second time, fearing that he might snatch up another one of their slides. Sometimes they rejected the slides that had been altered, or they struggled against him when he tried to put them back in- he’d had more than one door slam on his arm during the replacement process. The strangest thing that had ever happened to him had occurred on his fifth mission out, when he had discovered the reel he’d taken his slide out of had been replaced by an older memory from the target’s childhood that had randomly been recalled. 

J.T. thought that the replacement procedure would go smoothly in this case. The Vault had been pretty docile so far, and this slide hadn’t been altered enough to cause it any discomfort. He knelt down and began putting the slide back in, setting the upper corners into the frame first, then the bottom corners. It went in easily, securing itself within the Vault’s interior cavern. “There we go,” J.T. said, placing one hand on top of the Vault while running the other along the edges of the slide to check for gaps. He then shook the Vault a little, to make sure that it wouldn’t come loose. 

After confirming that the slide was set in properly, J.T. did a quick run through of the entire reel, just to make sure that everything was in order. Once that was done, J.T. firmly shut the door, relief at another job done flowing through him as it clicked shut. Almost done, anyway. He still needed to get out of Tringle’s head and make his way back to H.Q. without catching anyone’s attention, but that would be simple enough so long as he kept his wits about him. “Alright, buddy,” J.T. said, patting the Vault one last time before he rose. “I’m all done messin’ with you. Thanks for puttin’ up with it.” 

The Vault merely stood there, which was weird. Normally they scampered off the moment they were shed of him, eager to get back to their aimless hopping. This little critter’s strange behavior put J.T. on edge, and he was reluctant to leave until he could be sure that he hadn’t scrambled the Vault’s wits with all of his tampering. “Go on now,” he said, shooing it along. “It’s okay.” 

His reassurance did nothing to encourage the Vault to move about like it should. Instead it shifted slightly to the left, the direction of its gaze focused on something behind him. J.T. glanced back and realized what the Vault wanted the moment he saw the office’s closed door. “Oh, I get it. You want to go back to where you were.” 

The Vault made a rapid little squat motion; the closest it could get to a nod without a neck. If he granted the Vault’s request and opened the door, it would skip merrily out into the hall and back into Ms. Cougard’s office. That was guaranteed to make the Denizen angrier than a wet hen, which could bring the wrath of any mental defense she might have control of right down on his hatless head. It would also mean breaking his promise to rid her of the Vault that had been having a lot of fun wrecking her workspace. Ms. Cougard may have been downright rude to him, but J.T. had still given his word, and he liked to think that he still had enough integrity for that to matter to him. 

On the other hand, leaving the Vault here might upset the balance of the mental ecosystem. Vaults did not manifest in the places that they did for no reason, and one of the rules of the job was that you had to leave the headspace as much unchanged as you could. J.T. had left much worse things behind than a frolicking Vault and an angry boss. “Okay, I’ll let you out of here,” he said, already reaching into his pocket for his smelling salts- he would have to leave very quickly after unleashing this out into the hall. “But go easy on Ms. Cougard, you hear me?” 

The Vault gave no indication that it did. J.T. reached out with telekinesis and turned the knob anyway. The Vault charged the door before it was completely open, nearly knocking J.T. off of his feet and bumping very loudly into the wood on the it’s way out. 

The last thing J.T. heard before the strong scent of the salts sent him back to his physical body was the outraged scream of a very mad middle manager. 

* * *

“So I said to the big blue dude, ‘look, I don’t know where those little psi-chunks came from. This is my friends coat.’” 

The deluge of words came to an abrupt stop; the first pause Gabriella Esgarde had taken since she had begun regaling J.T. with the tale of her latest mission the very instant he had walked into their department’s breakroom. J.T. took this silence as his chance to turn the Nutribullet on. The blender made quick, if noisy work of the spinach, apple slices, blueberries and ice he had put into it, mixing the contents into a vibrant green concoction. “And what did the big blue fellow say to that?” J.T. asked as he poured the drink into his cup, eyeing the liquid skeptically. 

“Oh, are you doing that whole smoothie thing?” Ella said, pointing at his cup as he made his way over to her table. “I tried to get into that but I kept getting really bad brain freeze every time I drank one. Which was weird, because I never put any ice into the mix, since my blender was really old and made this ‘grr-grr-grr’ sound everytime I used it. And then it did break when my boyfriend put too many carrots in it for this ginger dressing. We still ate it though; it was actually pretty good. Just, really chunky.” 

J.T. managed not to laugh as he sat down across from her. Gabriella Esgarde’s voice sounded like she had sucked the helium out of a balloon, which paired poorly with the silly things that she often said. Her being alone in the breakroom before J.T. had come in was no coincidence. J.T. didn’t mind talking to her; her chatter would keep him awake until his boss called him into his office to give his report. “Chops talked me into giving it a shot,” he said. He picked up his cup and gave it a sniff-kinda fruity, kinda plasticy. “He says he’s had a lot of extra energy since he started drinking ‘em daily. Somethin’ in the spinach, I don’t know.” 

“Oh, it’s probably the green stuff,” Ella said, nodding sagely. “That’s supposed to be super good for you.” She clapped her hands together, her eyes wide with awe behind the lenses of her round, red-framed glasses. “But wow, that’s so amazing!” 

J.T. looked up, confused. “I ain’t committed to anything yet,” he said, assuming that Ella was impressed with his decision to live a healthier lifestyle. “To be honest, I’m not sure ‘bout the whole drinking your vegetables thing.” 

“No, I mean that it’s amazing that you’re still close enough friends with your ex to be taking health advice from him,” Ella clarified, beaming sweetly. 

“Oh.” J.T. felt his cheeks heat up.

“Most people say they’re still going to be friends when they break up, but then they aren’t,” Ella continued, oblivious to J.T.’s growing discomfort. “My cousin tried to be friends with her ex-boyfriend. They’d hang out at Dave and Busters every Friday, but, well, tension just kept building between them. They had too much history. She ended up getting a year in prison for bludgeoning him with a skeeball. It worked out though, because she got together with her cellmate.” She made the ‘OK’ sign with her hand. “Gene’s really nice. I hope it lasts.” 

J.T. rubbed the back of his neck. “That’s, uh, really somethin’.”

“But you guys are doing a really good job with the whole being friends thing,” Ella said. “You can’t even tell that there was a break up. Sometimes it’s really freakin’ obvious; there’s just this bad vibe, you know?” She ran her fingers through her short, purple-dyed hair. “Though to be honest, I didn’t even know you guys were dating for like, months.” 

“Hm, yeah.” J.T. took a sip of his green drink. The surprisingly fruity taste did little to alleviate the awkwardness he felt at the moment. “So about that big blue guy you were tellin’ me about earlier…” 

“Oh my God.” Ella slapped her hands over her mouth, her face heating up like she’d eaten three habanero chillies at once. “Was it insensitive to bring that up? It totally was, wasn’t it? I was just, um, really impressed with how mature you guys are being about everything.” 

“Now hold up,” J.T., said, “don’t go gettin’ upset now-” 

Unfortunately, Ella appeared intent on getting upset anyway. “But then again, it’s only been a few months, right? That’s too soon to be one-hundred percent over it.” She smacked herself on the forehead. “Oh man, I always do this. It’s like when I invited both Fitz and Serge out to that new Sushi place; you know, the one that just opened up downtown? It has a big tuna fish on the sign? It’s next to that Hookah bar they found all those stolen inhalers in. Anyway, I thought it would be okay, since it’s been a year since Serge ate Fitz’s goldfish on a dare. Water under the bridge and all that. Except the water was definitely not under the bridge. Hoo-boy.” Ella shuddered. “More like water completely wrecked up the bridge. Serge still can’t turn his neck that well.”

Ella, Ella,” J.T. said before she could get her motor mouth running again. “S’fine. I’m not upset.” That was sort of a lie but he figured that now wasn’t the time to be forward about his emotional state. “Let’s just move on, okay. Switch gears.” 

“Okay.” Ella closed her eyes and let her head hang forward, inhaling through her nose. She held the breath for a good ten seconds before letting the air out in a gust that sent her pen rolling off the table onto the floor. “Alright,” she said, opening her eyes. “What were we talking about again?” 

J.T. picked the fallen pen up with telekinesis and placed it back on the table. “What did the big blue fellow do after he frisked you and found all those chunks of psychic energy in your coat?”

“Oh!” You’re not gonna believe it!” Ella exclaimed excitedly. “He took me right to jail! Marched me straight into a cell, without even reciting Miranda’s rights or anything.” She picked her pen up and began twirling it between her fingers. “And I told him, ‘hey, you gotta read me her rights if you’re going to arrest me.’ He didn’t say anything so I started reciting them outloud to myself, you know, to give me some legal protection.” She stopped twirling her pen, looking as though something had just occurred to her. “But now that I think about it, this all happened in Leeds. Maybe Miranda hasn’t given the British any rights yet.” 

J.T. laughed. “Well, shoot. Can’t say that I know too much about British law.”

“I could ask Adeleke next time I see her,” Ella said, pressing the point of her pen against her chin. It left a little blue dot on her skin when she pulled it away. “She’s from there. Well, I mean, she’s from London, but the law there should be the same, since it’s all the state of England.” 

“Er.” J.T. did not think that Adeleke would appreciate being interrogated about the British legal system by a girl she had once called a ‘chatty little magpie.’ Before he could suggest that she just google it, the voice of his boss’ secretary popped into his head.  _ Mr. Carron will see you now _ , Ezikiel Rhodes thought, his voice crispier than the apples J.T. had put into his smoothie.

_ Gotcha. Be there in two,  _ he thought back as he downed the rest of his drink. He decided that it was pretty good taste-wise, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to go to the trouble of blending up a bunch of stuff anytime he was feeling parched. “Time to go,” he said, rising and pushing his chair back in. He set the cup back onto the counter next to the blender (which he would have to come back and clean up- another point against the smoothies) and waved goodbye to Ella. “I’ll be back to hear the end of that story soon.” 

“There’s not much more to it, really,” Ella said, waving back. “The Vault I was looking for was in the cell with me! Isn’t that lucky?” She glanced over at the blender. “And don’t worry about that, okay? I can clean it up; I bet you're super tired.” 

J.T. smiled. “You’re a saint, Ella.” 

* * *

Boris Carron, head of the Slide Extraction and Alteration Sector of the Information Control Unit, listened to the verbal report of J.T.’s recently completed mission closely. At no point did interrupt to ask questions or make comments; he merely sat there with his fingers steepled and an expression of intense concentration on his plain, broad face. When J.T. finished, he un-steppled his fingers, unfurrowed his brows, and leaned back in his chair. “That, Agent Hoofburger, was the most boring thing that I’ve heard all day.” 

J.T. nodded. “Thank you sir.” He spoke without accent, the effort needed to do so now minimal due to years of practice.

“A very routine mission, with everything going according to plan,” Carron said with a note of pride in his voice, as though the mission had been accomplished by his own efforts. “No detours, no damage to the target’s psyche, and no slide rejections.” He raised his hand and drew a horizontal line in the air in front of him. “Smooth sailing from start to finish.”

“Uh, yes sir.” J.T.’s eyes darted over to the clock hanging on the office’s left side wall. It was rectangular in shape and designed to look like the front of a Vault, with the combination lock serving as the clock face. “I always try to do things by the book,” he said, hoping that Carron would not keep him here much longer. It was getting on three am and J.T. looking to hit the hay soon.

“I know that,” Carron said amicably, hand falling to his desk. The thump that should have resulted from the action was strangely absent. “You’ve been here what, three years?” He stared at J.T. until he received a nod of confirmation. “Three years, God knows how many missions, and not a single one of them memorable in any way.” The corners of Carron’s mouth turned upward. J.T. couldn’t say the man was smiling, since the rest of his features didn’t follow through. “I’ve always liked that about you.” 

J.T. straightened his back to prevent himself from sinking into his comfortable chair. “Well sir, I know you don’t like the extra paperwork that comes with excitement.” He knew that Carron was inching toward some sort of point, and wasn’t just praising him to be nice. The exhaustion tugging at him made it difficult to predict what that point would be.

“I also don’t like brains being unexpectedly sneezed out,” Carron said, traces of humor sneaking into his bland brown eyes. “Let me tell you, it’s a real shitshow over in Extensive Reel Manipulation.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice conspiratolly, as though he was sharing some sort of secret with J.T. “Jones has been resisting every attempt they’ve made at changing his mind about what happened on Friday. That guy will be lucky if his brain is only half mush by the time those dimwits get done with him.”

J.T. was more unnerved by the amusement in his boss’ tone than by what he was reporting. “I...sure hope they pull it together over there,” he said. That funny feeling he got whenever he talked to Carron for an extended period of time was creeping up on him again; the one where all of his muscles seemed to tighten up of their own accord.

“I’m sure they’ll manage to think of some story that Jones’ psyche will accept eventually.” The way Carron shook his head was reminiscent of a parent recalling the silly antics of their child. “Right now, the only team that doesn’t look like a bunch of incompetent assholes is ours.” 

J.T. glanced at the little wooden sailboat sitting on Carron’s desk. “You run a tight ship here, sir.”

“I’m lucky to have an excellent crew.” Carron’s not-smile tightened. “Unfortunately it seems like somebody’s trying to rock our little boat.” 

And there it was. The topic that Carron had actually been intending to broach. “Not sure I follow, sir,” J.T. said, as he knew Carron would have no doubt expected him to. 

“We’ve recently received a new addition to our team,” Carron said, the casual way he spoke undercut by the tic in his jaw. “Agent Ojo will be working as a Slide Artist with us on a part-time basis starting Wednesday.” He let out a cheerless laugh. “Maybe you already heard about it from Agent Ojo.” 

“She did mention it to me, yes.” J.T. bit the inside of his lip, already anticipating a very uncomfortable conversation. 

“You know what this guy’s first name is?” Carron asked, then answered before J.T. could respond. “Adewumi. Can you believe that? Bad enough that they both have the same last name. Mix-ups are basically guaranteed.” He exhaled a sigh of disbelief. “Their parents really should have dug deeper.”

J.T. swallowed, wishing that he had another one of his green smoothies to alleviate the dryness in his mouth. “It is sort of strange they’re letting siblings work together.” 

“It’s not strange at all,” Carron said, his levity gone. “This guy didn’t end up with us by accident. Somebody up above pulled some strings.” 

J.T.’s stomach clenched anxiously. By now he knew that his boss was about to drag him into something that he most definitely did not want to be apart of- agency intrigue. He would have to choose his next words very carefully if he wanted to escape whatever task was in store for him. “With...all due respect sir,” he began, trying not to let his nervousness slip into his voice, “are you sure that this isn’t some sort of clerical mistake? Maybe he was supposed to go somewhere else, but someone checked the wrong box or filled a blank in wrong.”

Carron waved the argument away. “The circumstances are too strange. I could understand a mix-up if we actually needed a new full time person, but suddenly getting a part-timer when I haven’t requested anybody? Something is fishy.” 

“Oh…” There was little J.T. could say to that- he was too tired and too nervous to think of a logical way to counter Carron’s conclusions. “So...what are we going to do? Do you need me to find out who ordered him here or…?”

Carron shook his head. “No. I already tried tracing the paper trail and got nothing. Whoever did this knew how to keep their hands ink-free.” He made eye contact with J.T. before continuing. “Steele, Torres, Esgarde? They’re great, but not who I can rely on with a situation as delicate as this.” 

J.T. tried very hard not to look away. There was a small spark within Carron’s normally impassive gaze, and that it was visible at all told J.T. that Carron was furious about this hiring. Why, J.T. could not even begin to guess. “Uh, thanks?”

“I want you to keep an eye on him,” Carron said. “This, Agent Adewumi Ojo. I’m going to try to schedule you two together as much as possible. I want to know if he does or says anything suspicious. If there’s so much as a goddamn pen missing after his shift I want to know about it.”

J.T.’s mouth dropped open for a second before he regained his control and closed it. There were many reasons why monitoring a co-worker like that was totally messed-up, even without him being the close relative of another one. But J.T. was not used to voicing protests, especially to authority figures, and the one he raised here was weak and vague. “Well, sir, I’m not...not too sure about this. I don’t think I’m the right guy for it. Spying in that manner really isn’t what I do.”

“I’m not asking you to break into his head or anything,” Carron said, brushing aside J.T.’s poorly conveyed concerns. “Just watch him. Do what you would do if you spotted any of your other co-workers doing something suspicious.”

“Uh...alright.” It was not alright, but J.T. didn’t have the gumption to do anything but capitulate. “Suppose I could do that.” It felt wrong just saying the words. His only hope was that Adeleke would be right about her brother getting bored and transferring out of the department before this whole spying thing got out of hand. 

“Excellent.” The friendly demeanor was back, like it had never gone away. “Between the two of us, we’ll find out what’s really going on, and the best way to maintain this good thing our crew has going.” He then gave J.T. the same dismissal he always did, as though the previous conversation had never happened. “Good work, Hoofburger. Enjoy the rest of your night- or morning, I guess. Who knows.” 

And J.T. departed in the same manner that he usually did, albeit a lot wearier. 


End file.
